Written by Dr. Bob Smart, adjunct faculty Urbana Theological Seminary

Preceding the Great Awakening was a general cry or plea for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. When that generation’s prayer appeared to be answered, many questioned why there was a mixture of fanaticism accompanying such a mighty effusion of the Spirit of God. Since the central question of the Great Awakening was not a question of vitality but of legitimacy, Edwards sought to discern a true work of the Spirit and to defend it as such. This is why Edwards’s sermon Distinguishing Marks of a True Work of the Spirit of God at Yale’s commencement, given at the height of the revival, had such a great impact.

One of the benefits of reading and studying Edwards’s apologetic of the Great Awakening as a genuine work of the Spirit is all that one can learn and appropriate to one’s own Christian experience and Gospel ministry. Here are three “take-a-ways” from my own study.

First, every true revival and outpouring of the Spirit is a sovereign work of God. Just as Jesus said to Nicodemus, “the Spirit blows wherever He wills” (John 3:8). The proponents and opposers of the revival had no control over when, how long, or where the Spirit would manifest God’s power and love for people. The work began inWalesin 1739, then in New England in 1740-1741, and came intensely inScotlandin 1742-43. Such a short period of time, but great was the impact for generations after.

Second, nothing shows more the impotency of man without the Spirit’s effects than a revival. After the 1734-35 revivals inNorthampton, Edwards could do nothing to re-awaken his community again. Suddenly, in 1740, the “dead bones” rose to life. After 1744, Edwards and the friends of the Awakening could not obtain the same spiritual fervor in their ministries.

Thirdly, every true work of the Spirit is a mixed work. Satan always mixes up the good with the bad. Edwards taught that the Devil held back the saints as long as he possibly could from revival. When the Spirit was poured out, the Devil would push the saints too far into fanaticism. Edwards, therefore, would not defend the radical proponents of the Great Awakening. In fact, he said that “the friends of revival are often its’ worst enemies.” We should not expect an ideal revival because there never has been one, nor will there ever be one. Revivals quicken the Kingdom’s advance, but are complicated with new problems and challenges as well.

Every leader ought to study the great periods of revival and missionary advance in order to learn to discern more about the nature of the Person and work of the Holy Spirit. Edwards offers the student plenty of material for such an endeavor.

written by Dr. Bob Smart, adjunct faculty Urbana Theological Seminary

Christian history is replete with landmark theological debates: Valentinus and Irenaeus, Pelagius and Augustine, Erasmus and Luther. Dr. Kenneth Minkema, general editor of the Yale edition of Edwards’s Works, states that this book offers “the first sustained effort devoted to considering the points of debate between Chauncy and Edwards”–the well-known leaders of the “Old Light” and “New Light” parties (respectively) at the height of the Great Awakening–“and to understanding them contextually, hermeneutically, and constructively” (p. ix).

The sum and substance of this book is a treatment of the controversy that swirled around the question whetherNew England’s great revivals were a work of the Holy Spirit. As a work of reception history, I have given my best in scope and attention to detail. Employing tools from social science, social history, and theology, I explain the terms of the debate; show how Edwards and his critics disagreed with one another, and attempt to offer an even-handed assessment of the legacies of their conflict from the 1740s and 50s to the present.

This work would interest pastors and leaders in the history of revivals inAmerica—but especially to those with an interest in the pneumatological questions most important to Edwards himself, and to his heirs. By pneuma-tological questions, I mean the questions about a true work of the Holy Spirit.

In the 1740s Jonathan Edwards emerged as the New Light proponent of the claim that the Great Awakening was, in the main, a true work of the Spirit of God. Conversely, Charles Chauncy led the Old Lights in opposition by offering criticisms of the Awakening.

The central question asked by the contemporaries was: Is this an outpouring of the Holy Spirit? Four general answers were offered: it is all of the Spirit; it is mostly of the Spirit; it is little of the Spirit; and it is none of the Spirit. Edwards and the moderate proponents believed the Great Awakening was mostly of the Spirit, yet mixed with fanaticism. Chauncy and the “opposers” believed it was little of the Spirit, and a lot of “noise about religion.”

What made the central question so difficult to answer was the cultural context—a crisis of authority. Having researched that era and the colonial context, I mention six elements that complicated the answer to the central pneumatological question. These include the religiously motivated colonialism (40), the moderate British Enlightenment (42), the emergent economic trade market (43), the progressive sociological leveling (44), and the disintegration of the Puritan covenantal system (47).

Edwards had already emerged as the leading interpreter prior to the Great Awakening by publishing his popular work on a previous outpouring of the Spirit in Northamptoncalled, A Faithful Narrative. In chapter two, however, this study explains the various modern schools of interpretation that may hinder the reader’s ability to understand the contemporaries themselves. This chapter, therefore, explains four modern theological schools, four modern sociological schools, and the modern historiographers’ interpretations—one 1990s debate in particular.

After thorough attention to Edwards’s initial revival apologetic and defense, Chauncy attacked Edwards’s interpretation in his Seasonable Thoughts. Chauncy had emerged as the Old Light leader 1743, and he offered his “antidote.” His five parts paralleled Edwards’s five parts in Some Thoughts.

Edwards’s final response to Chauncy and the many who endorsed Chauncy’s book is examined in chapter five where his Treatise on Religious Affections is outlined and interpreted in light of the debate.

The legacies of each leader is the subject of the last chapter and conclusion to the book, which seeks to help the reader assess our times and the nature of the ongoing debates that swirl around the Great Awakening.

written by John Roekeman, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship staff member

A couple of summers ago I worshipped at a large Southern Baptist church in Austin, TX.  The Texas pastor surprised me by quoting John Stott, an Anglican preacher and British author. When I spoke with the Southern Baptist pastor after the service, his eyes watered as he expressed his deep appreciation for the impact of John Stott on his life.

David Brooks, who is not Christian but Jewish, in an October, 2004 New York Times editorial commented that if evangelicals were forced to elect a pope, they would choose John Stott   There are at least two reasons numerous key Christian leaders throughout the world hold John Stott in high regard:

First, John Stott had a remarkable gift for bible exposition, making clear what the Biblical texts say.    Stott strengthened, clarified, encouraged the faith of many during the last fifty years of preaching and writing.  After reading a paragraph by Stott, you often have the feeling of “Why, of course!  It’s clear to me now.”  Or, “yes, that’s exactly what I thought but could never state so clearly.”  Sometimes I’ve read a paragraph by Stott and said, “I could never write that paragraph if I had a hundred years to try.”  Stott was especially good at succinctly summarizing teaching before going on to a new section of Scripture.

Stott has so many outstanding lucid and “spot-on” paragraphs and sentences, it’s likely a publisher will someday compile a book of his memorable lines.

Secondly, Stott shared our ministry passions, doctrinal loyalties as evangelical Christians.  He was totally an evangelical in mind and heart: for the intellectual defense of the gospel; for the demands of courage, suffering and witness for the gospel; for building up the body of Christ; for world missions.  Another Stott book I read as an undergraduate was Christ The Controversialist.  The purpose of the book was to explain why evangelicals were evangelicals because of their loyalty to Jesus.

I read several tributes for John Stott after his death in late July.  At least two authors ended with the well-meaning words of blessing, requiescat in pace, “may he rest in peace.”  It made me wonder how well the writers were acquainted with Stott’s evangelical and Biblical instincts. “The proper epitaph to write for a Christian believer is not a dismal and uncertain petition, ‘R.I.P.’ (requiescat in pace, ‘may he rest in peace’) but a joyful and certain affirmation ‘C.A.D.” (‘Christ abolished death’)…” Guard the Gospel, p. 40.

The first Christian book handed to me as an undergraduate was the compendium of talks from the Urbana 1967 missions conference.  John Stott was the Bible expositor of 2 Timothy.   In 2 Timothy 4:7, Paul spoke about his imminent death:  “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”   Here is Stott’s exhortation to us from Urbana ’67 but apropos as a word from God to us at the passing of John Stott:  “Our God is the God of history.  He is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year.  He buries his workmen and he carries on his work.  The torch of the gospel is handed down from one generation to the next.  As the leaders of the former generation die, it is all the more urgent for the next generation to rise up, to step forward bravely, and to take their place.”

May God give us grace to courageously step up in our day, in our generation.

As writer of this brief article, I invoke the privilege of snatching a phrase, midverse, from Acts 3:21 – …until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke… – and then using it as a scriptural pinprick into the corpus of the writings of C.S. Lewis. I have been reading Lewis for 38 years. I am not a “Lewis Scholar;” rather, a “Lewis Lover,” and in the loving, certain subjects have redounded throughout his work, woven into his fiction or proposed in his essays. One of these themes concerns and presupposes “the restoring of all things” in Christ.

Now, maybe I have not paid close enough attention over the past forty years when I think I actually have been paying attention to Christian teaching and preaching; or maybe I’ve been tuned to the wrong station or pulling from the wrong shelf of my local Christian bookstore; or just maybe the observation I am about to make actually has substance. Anyway, here is my observation: we (we know who we are) don’t think enough, talk enough, or encourage each other enough about the restoring of all things.

In the grand scheme of things, this “underselling” at best, or omission at worst, seems to border on the ridiculous. Praise be to God: C.S. Lewis must not be included as an underseller or omitter, and I love Him (and him) for it. Lewis has been able to break through my density and doldrums regarding this promising premise of our faith, and he has been able to do it by both sweeping me up into stories and arguing me into agreement. The citings of said stories and arguments would make for a nice “scholarly” package, but (remember), I am not a scholar, so I will reference a few and hope those who are interested will allow these and other restorative references to fire your imaginations as they have mine.

Consider this from the final chapter of  That Hideous Strength:

“You are quite right. The laws of the universe are never broken. Your mistake is to think that the little regularities we have observed on one planet for a few hundred years are the real unbreakable laws…”

Thus says Grace Ironwood, a somewhat mysterious (albeit mostly redemptive) character with a Dickensonian name. She has responded to an observation concerning the strange case of the main character of Lewis’ space trilogy, one Elwin Ransom (consider the Dickensonian possibilities of his names). It seems that Ransom, once an unassuming British academic, has been (literally) swept up and away to other planets, planets where earthly norms are not normal. Ransom returns to earth as Director of an effort to oppose and defeat an evil, even demonic, force which threatens to overtake the earth and destroy all that is good and lovely and true. The force calls itself N.I.C.E. – National Institute of Coordinated Experiments.

On a previous “mission” to Perelandra, Ransom was “transformed.” He was wounded in the heel by the Satanic Professor Weston (Gen. 3:15?; maybe, but there are other possibilities…). Back on earth (the silent planet), Ransom neither ages nor heals. The quote from Grace Ironwood is in response to an observation on Ransom’s condition by a less “informed” character. Ransom must return to Perelandra and its (dare I say this?) quasi-Edenic state.

Grace Ironwood’s observation is in keeping with Ransom’s experience and Lewis’ biblically-informed projection that there is much more to know than that which can only be ascertained by considering earth and its “realities.” As Grace notes, The laws of the  universe are never broken.” In Lewis’ economy, those “laws” would include the “deeper magic” of Narnia and the sacrificial death and resurrection to GREATER LIFE and continual creation of the Lawgiver/Creator.

Speaking of Narnia, let us hasten to the end of the end of the stories, to the chapter “Further Up and Further In, from The Last Battle:

The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can’t describe it any better than that: if ever you get there you will know what I mean.

It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried:

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved old Narnia is that sometime looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!”

He shook his mane and sprang forward into a great gallop – a Unicorn’s gallop which, in our world, would have carried him out of sight in a few moments.

When I read this, I feel like looking up one of my favorite unicorns and hopping on his back! Maybe you identify with me when I say that things in this life, especially things beautiful and holy, seem to be echoes of Edenor harbingers of heaven or both. When reading Lewis’ fanciful fiction, it is always important to remember how he warns against taking literally what the children experience following the wardrobe entry into Narnia, or the bus travelers to heaven in The Great Divorce, or the letters from Uncle Screwtape, or Ransom’s meanderings to Mars and Venus, etc. But it is equally important to recognize that in all these “variations on a theme,” he is saying something significant about the Christ who proclaims in Revelation 21:5, “Behold, I make all things new.”

Which brings us to a less fanciful but no less fruitful gleaning about these “new things” from his Miracles:

It must indeed be emphasized throughout that we know and can know very little about the New Nature. The task of the imagination here is not to forecast it but simply, by brooding on many possibilities, to make room for a more complete and circumspect agnosticism. It is useful to remember that even now senses responsive to different vibrations would admit us to quite new worlds of experience: that a multi-dimensional space would be different, almost beyond recognition, from the space we are now aware of, yet not discontinuous from it: that time may not always be for us, as it now is, unilinear and irreversible: that other parts of Nature might some day obey us as our cortex now does. It is useful not because we can trust these fancies to give us any positive truths about the New Creation but because they teach us not to limit, in our rashness, the vigour and variety of the new crops which the old field might yet produce. We are therefore compelled to believe that nearly all we are told about the New Creation is metaphorical. But not quite all. That is just where the story of the Resurrection suddenly jerks us back like a tether. The local appearances, the eating, the touching, the claim to be corporeal, must be either reality or sheer illusion. The New Nature is, in the most troublesome way, interlocked at some points with the Old.

I find this passage to be Lewis at his most familiar: firing the imagination, but tempering the fire with a dousing of sanctified agnosticism. For all he “knew” or encouraged his readers to try to understand, he never bounded beyond his essential humility of not knowing and not understanding all the mysteries, all the “deepest magic.” Remember, as Aslan taught the children, earthly existence is “the Shadowlands.” Certainly reminiscent of Paul’s “…seeing through a glass darkly,” Lewis understands that this realm has been darkened, but this realm is ephemeral; the next is not. This realm has been tainted; the next has not. As Aslan tells the children concerning their deaths in a railroad accident, departing from the Shadowlands means: The term is over; the holidays have begun. The dream is ended; this is the morning.

It is fair to surmise that Lewis looked forward through the shadows to a restoration of the Ultimate Story of the Way, the Truth, and the Life without a hint of darkness or decay. He looked to freedom so unencumbered that even faint memories of bindings are nothing. And he seemed to love to make merry metaphors of just how fun this all should be to imagine. Consider how The Chronicles end:

All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

Better. For ever. Bree-hee-hee!

By Dave Berry

November 23, 1963

I was twelve; I was in seventh grade; and I was paying attention.

The previous afternoon, the distinguished Mr. Floyd, Superintendent of Schools for Community District #305, Manlius, IL, had interrupted our music class with a solemn and shocking pronouncement, spoken (as was typically the case when he was very serious) as he grasped his right ear lobe with right thumb and forefinger. His words: “Mrs. Johnson, children, the President of the United States is dead.”

He turned, walked out, and left Mrs. Johnson to pick up the pieces. In retrospect, I can’t believe how quickly and decisively she acted. She stepped out from behind the piano, assured us that even though this turn of events was frightening and sad, everything was going to be alright. We must be courageous. Some of my classmates started sniffling softly, one of my buddies mentioned “the Russians,” and Rick – probably the toughest kid in the class and definitely the biggest JFK lover (he had a picture book about the Kennedys in his desk) – actually let out a long wail and then another. If Rick could so quickly be reduced to wailing, it seemed to the rest of us that all the world could soon start spinning out of control.

Mrs. Johnson to the rescue.

My house was less than 150 yards from the “ag shop” which also housed CUSD #305’s choral music room. She turned to me and said: “David, why don’t you run home and get a radio? We’ll listen together to see if we can found out more information.” Even though I was as much in shock as the rest of the class, I also recognized a previously unparalleled privilege to leave the school grounds during the school day.

A gentle but cold rain had been falling all day, but I didn’t bother to throw on my jacket, I just raced through N. A. Johnson’s (no relation) yard, blew threw the front door, informed my mom that “the President of the United States is dead,” scrambled to the bedroom I shared with my two older brothers, grabbed brother Greg’s coveted turquoise clock radio, and hurried back out the door and on to the ag shop and some shaken seventh graders.

It seems that the gentle but cold rain had made the apron to the entrance quite slippery. As I was more concerned with speed than stopping, I hit that apron and tried to slam on the brakes. My feet flew right out from under me, the radio flew right out from beside me, and we were both “broadcast” onto the concrete. Happily, my fall from grace had been unobserved. Sadly, the radio was cracked and scratched. (At that moment, I feared my brother Greg more than the Russians.) Thankfully, the radio still worked.

Mrs. Johnson turned on the radio, settled us all down, and helped us process the hard truth and confusing messages coming across the airwaves. The next few days, even weeks and months, were also times of hard truth and confusing messages. But I was twelve… and I was paying attention.

Our family read the long-since defunct Chicago Daily News back then. Naturally, the  November 23, 1963 edition was utterly dominated by the news from Dallas. I scoured the front page and then the second for any insights I could gain into the tragedy. And then I saw it, bottom left/page two, an entry that seemed to violate the sanctity of the nation’s grief. I don’t remember it word-for-word as I do Mr. Floyd’s pronouncement, but this is essentially what it said:

British author C.S. Lewis died on November 22 at his home in Oxford, England.

I remember this distinctly, not because I knew anything about Lewis but because I couldn’t imagine that the demise of any British author, Shakespeare included, deserved to occupy space on the same page as the news of an assassinated American President. I certainly didn’t know the word “unseemly” at that time, but I knew the feeling. And this miniscule mention seemed an intrusion on the sensibilities of an injured nation’s soul. It made me mad, this interruption by an interloper, but because I was paying attention, I packed away that name into a corner of my brain. Ten years later as a senior in college, I unpacked it, and changed my mind about the import of that British author.

The January term at Illinois Wesleyan University, dubbed “Short Term,” included a class called “The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis.” Our professor, Chaplain White, had written a book by that title. Class consisted of 18 days in which we read the chaplain’s book and, in their entirety, the following:

Surprised by Joy, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, A Grief Observed, Mere Christianity, Christian Reflections, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength, The Abolition of Man, Till We Have Faces, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Do the math – a book a day, with a quiz every morning on the reading of the day, then on to the next day and the next book. My future wife was in this class with me, the only time we were able to take a class together. (She majored in nursing, I in English.) Looking back, this class taught both of us that we could read faster than we thought, retain more than we thought, and (most significantly) discover that here was a Christian writer who greatly encouraged our nascent faith. Maybe for the first time, we knew that, as Christians, we didn’t have to check our intellects at the door of our classrooms, dorm rooms, or favorite hangouts. I, for one, felt emboldened for the first time to “stand up” for the historic Christian faith on campus. Reading Lewis helped me examine arguments both for and against the faith. Reading him gave me (and others) a voice.

This immersion in Lewis was a baptism in brilliance for many of us in the class and an important step in the beginning of faith journeys that I believe have been fruitful. We began to reference him in writing or quote him in class. Such temerity had heretofore seemed fruitless and self-limiting in the IWU arena of ideas. Not only was the strength of his apologetics so empowering and refreshing, I think that we may have been most inspired by identifying with his fictional characters. There was truly great joy in rereading and discussing these stories, whether we put ourselves on the Dawn Treader… or the bus to heaven… or the spaceship to Perelandra.

Without question, one of the great appeals to us was the joy of reading Lewis together, aloud. The sophistication of his arguments and plots, his allusions to things ancient, Medieval, and British, and his humour (sic) were best appreciated by a group because somebody in that group just might know something about Greek goddesses, Norse legends or Oxford traditions.

For me, this all began in 1973. I have been reading Lewis ever since.

Fast forward to 2004. Having traded in my businessman’s hat for that of church planter, I set out to connect with college students and other young adults in Bloomington-Normal. I was soon “surprised by joy” (couldn’t resist) to find that the desire to read Lewis together – aloud – was shared by a new generation. There were typically six to eight readers. All through the years the degree of familiarity with Lewis and his work has varied greatly, but that has only served to encourage the well-read to share and the neophytes to soak it all in.

In recent years, we have averaged 15-20 readers. Most, but not all, are college students.  We try to make it refreshing and a break from the pressures of academia by doing all our reading together. There are no assignments. Further, we sometimes celebrate with British-themed teas or meals and expand our horizons with Lewis-related outings (movies, trips to the Wade Center in Wheaton, or outings to the library or bookstores).

There is “deeper magic” in our little literary society. It has always been comprised of folks from quite varied religious backgrounds. (In year one, we had a regular who is a Muslim from Iran who was attending grad school at ISU; delightful, he loved reading with us and talking about Aslan.)  This current “crop” of Clive lovers is an exciting and eclectic mix from high church, low church, and in-between church. Reading Lewis has encouraged us all to view the faith beyond our backgrounds and share the journey with great freedom.

It has become my great joy to welcome college freshmen into the group and share four years of reading Lewis together. As their experience with Lewis grows, so does their ability to connect the “variations on a theme” which appear again and again in his works. It is encouraging to hear someone offer, “Doesn’t that remind you of Ransom?” or “That’s so much like his argument about animals… and Eden… and the restoration of all things.” The groups have also grown to appreciate the subtleties of Lewis’ humor and will often be reading along and burst out laughing at a nuance or turn of a phrase, offering something like, “He enjoyed writing that!” And that’s part of the pleasure for me in all this: the readers fall in love with the soul, skill, and style of this “prophet to the skeptic.” I continually find that his work has grabbed them just as it did me. Lewis gives us a dose of something we desperately need, something whispered by the apparition of the albatross to Lucy in the crow’s nest of the Dawn Treader as she tried to peer through seemingly impenetrable darkness:

“Courage, dear heart.”

And I think that’s why we love to read Lewis. He feeds the courage of our convictions. He does it with essays and stories and literary criticism and poetry. He does it with amazing prescience and disarming humor. He does it by turning a phrase or phrasing a turn. Thus, we continue to read, together, aloud and we continue to be encouraged.

I needed courage on November 23, 1963. How interesting that it has come not from the President who penned Profiles in Courage, but from “the interloper” who wrote, “Courage, dear heart.”

by Dave Berry

By Dr. Joe Thomas
Originally published online in Glimpses by Christianity Today International

Patrick – The Making of a Missionary

The wooden boats tossed to and fro in the heavy seas just off the coast of Britannia. Big, powerfully built men, their long hair bundled up on top of their heads, iron swords in sheaths fastened at the hip to their belts, surveyed the tempestuous sea as they set sail for Ireland.

Patrick lay bound in the cramped hull, one of many captives crammed into the small boat. The sixteen-year-old was motionless, frozen in a state of shock. His father’s estate lay behind him in smoking ruins. Fortunately, his parents had been away from home and were still alive, but Patrick’s life as a pampered aristocrat’s son was over. Now he was a slave to a race his family considered barbarians.

Several hours later, the boat landed on the shore of the strange land. Ireland! It was very different from Britannia. There were no Roman roads, no Roman architecture, no amphitheaters, public buildings or baths. The Irish even preferred to live out in the wilds with their extended family rather than in towns. Even more ominous, Ireland knew nothing of Christianity and its virtues. Instead, it clung to its pagan rituals, which were led by Druid priests.

The contrast between Ireland and his beloved Britannia only served to intensify Patrick’s fears. As he gazed around the slave camp, Patrick realized that thousands of Britons had been captured and brought to Ireland. Eventually, the slaves were organized and marched off to the primitive homes of their new owners. Putting one weary foot in front of the other, Patrick numbly walked the path his captors had forced upon him. What lay ahead for him, he did not know.

Born to Wealth and Privilege
Magonus Sucatus Patricius (Patrick) caught his first glimpse of the world around the year 385 A.D. Born into a British upper-class family that was nominally Christian, Patrick lived out his childhood and youth in the sort of privilege that only aristocratic birth can bring. Part of that privilege included a Roman education and a house full of servants to meet all of his needs.

Surprisingly, out of this life of ease and lax spiritual commitment was born a successful missionary. At the end of Patrick’s life, Ireland had essentially left its pagan roots and become a largely Christian nation, with many men and women eager to give their whole lives to God for the sake of the Gospel. Indeed, a stream of missionaries flowed out of Ireland over the next few centuries, bringing most of the barbarian tribes of northern Europe into the Christian fold.

Yet, how did Patrick come to know God so intimately, growing up in a nominal Christian family? How did he overcome the pampered nature of his childhood to withstand the rigors of a missionary life in Ireland? Part of the answer, it must be remembered, is that nothing is too great an obstacle for God to overcome. So God plucked Patrick from his life of ease and comfort and made him into a man of God. This is the story of how God made a rugged missionary out of Magonus Sucatus Patricius.

A Slave Cries Out to God
Now a slave, Patrick spent his days tending his master’s sheep and trying to learn a new language. He was caught in an alien world of gods and goddesses, magical practices and spells. Once a free man living under the protection of Roman law and a son of a wealthy governmental official, Patrick’s fall into slavery left him feeling hopeless. Caught in the slough of despond, Patrick slowly began to turn to the God he had willingly neglected as a youth. Patrick started praying day and night to the God he did not yet know. In prayer, he poured out his fears and anxieties to God. Shepherding on the slopes of Mt. Slemish, Patrick’s heart began to formulate the words to what would later become his famous prayer:

I arise today
through the strength of Christ
with His Baptism
through the strength of His Crucifixion
with His Burial
through the strength of His Resurrection
with His Ascension,
through the strength of His descent
for the Judgment of Doom

Christ to protect me today
against poison, against burning,
against drowning, against wounding,
so that there may come abundance of reward

Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ in me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left
Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit,
Christ where I arise, Christ in the heart
of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth
of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today,
through a mighty strength,
the invocation of the Trinity,
through belief in the Threeness,
through confession of the Oneness,
towards the Creator
Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of Christ.
May Thy salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.

And so Patrick grew to know God intimately and fervently in a way he never did as an aristocrat’s son in Britannia.

The Voice in the Night
One night Patrick heard a voice in his dreams that told him, “Soon you will go to your own country.”

And a little later the voice declared, “See, your ship is ready.”

The next morning Patrick secretly left his master, confident that the Spirit of God would guide him to the promised ship and take him to freedom. Patrick traveled two hundred miles on foot from Mt. Slemish to the ocean’s shoreline and found a ship ready to depart from Ireland. Patrick approached the captain of the ship, which carried Irish wolfhounds meant for Roman entertainment in stadiums across the Empire, and offered to tend to the dogs for free passage.

The captain replied harshly, “It is of no use for you to ask to go along with us.”

Disappointed, Patrick turned to walk back up from the shore. He began to pray and seek God for direction, and soon, one of the ship’s crewmen shouted after him, “Come, hurry, we shall take you on in good faith; make friends with us in whatever way you like.”

The ship sailed for three days, arriving in the Roman province of Gaul (modern France) on the continent of Europe. For several days, the men walked through Gaul without meeting a soul. Food was scarce, and hunger soon started to overtake them.

The captain turned to Patrick in desperation, “Tell me, Christian: you say that your God is great and all-powerful; why, then, do you not pray for us? As you can see, we are suffering from hunger; it is unlikely indeed that we shall ever see a human being again.”

Full of confidence that the Lord had arranged all things, Patrick responded, “Be truly converted with all your heart to the Lord my God, because nothing is impossible for Him, that this day He may send you food on your way until you be satisfied; for He has abundance everywhere.” As he finished this exhortation, a herd of pigs suddenly appeared in front of them. They spent the next two days feasting on the wild pigs.

The Voice of the Irish
After some time in Gaul, Patrick had the opportunity to return to Britannia and his family. When he arrived, his family was overjoyed to see him, since they had given up all hope of ever seeing him alive again. Patrick again found himself living in his former luxury and enjoyed the privilege that came from being the son of an aristocratic father. But in the midst of the celebration and jubilation at his homecoming, he could not forget his heavenly Father who had rescued him and forged him into a man of God. Patrick could never return to his old way of life, for he was a new man.

Once again, the Lord visited him at night in a vision. A man named Victoricus came to Patrick from Ireland with several letters. Patrick began to read one letter which started, “The voice of the Irish….” Suddenly, a group of people from Western Ireland interrupted his reading and said to him in one voice, “We ask you, holy boy, come and walk among us once more.” The desperate plea from the people broke Patrick’s heart, rendering him unable to finish the letter. At that moment he woke up.

Patrick told his family of the vision he received during the night. They pleaded with him not to leave them again. Hadn’t he suffered enough hardship for one lifetime? How could he return to the people who had enslaved him? How could he bear to leave them again? In turmoil and divided in purpose, he continued to pray and seek God.

The Spirit of God confirmed his call to Ireland. This time, Patrick would go to Ireland as the Lord’s bond-slave to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ. To receive training for his missionary work, Patrick traveled back to Gaul to receive instruction from some of the country’s most excellent teachers of the Bible.

Still confident in God’s call for him to go to Ireland, Patrick waited patiently to hear from the leaders of the church. Their decision came in 432 A.D., and after raising him to the level of bishop, the church sent Magonus Sucatus Patricius off to the former land of his enslavement. Fully prepared for the hardships ahead, fluent in the their language and used to discerning the leading of the Spirit of God, Patrick, God’s chosen instrument, set sail for Ireland. The country and, some argue, the world, would never be the same again.

By Dr. Joe Thomas

Originally Published in:  Hillerbrand, Hans Joachim. “Davies, Samuel.” The Encyclopedia of Protestantism. D-K ed. Vol. 2. New York: Routledge, 2004. 558-59.

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DAVIES, SAMUEL (1723-1761)
American clergy. Virtually forgotten in the long shadows of such towering eighteenth-century figures as George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and John Wesley, Samuel Davies sowed seeds of revolutionary change in colonial America. As Presbyterian’ pastor and leader of the Great Awakening in Virginia, published poet, America’s first composer of hymns, educator of slaves, successful advocate for religious toleration, and the fourth president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), he helped shape much of the religious landscape that developed in nineteenth-century America.

Call to Ministry
Born November 3, 1723 to David and Martha Davies in New Castle County, Delaware, his mother named him after the Old Testament prophet Samuel in response to answered prayer for a son, and similarly dedicated him to the service of the Lord. He studied for the ministry in Samuel Blair’s famed “log college” at Fagg’s Manor, Pennsylvania. Davies appeared before the New Light Presbytery of New Castle and received his ordination in 1747.

Davies settled in Hanover County in May, 1748 to pastor four meetinghouses of Presbyterian dissenters. Willing to work within the ecclesiastical system of the Church of England, the established church of Virginia, Davies sought and obtained a license to preach from the colonial governor. Unlike many New Light preachers, the temperate Davies took care to cultivate warm relations with those who belonged to the established church and colonial government. He did not openly evangelize their members, nor did he disparage the Anglican ministers. Indeed, on October 4, 1748 he married Jane Holt, the daughter of a prominent family from Williamsburg and a member of the Church of England. As a result, even those who disagreed with him found no grounds to criticize his character or actions.

Great A wakening in Virginia
The Great Awakening solidified its hold in Virginia under the ministry of Davies. Soon the number of Presbyterian congregations was spreading beyond Hanover County. Davies found a ready audience for the gospel when he arrived in the colony. New Light evangelists before him had brought many people into the faith and prepared many for the evangelical message. Davies’s own revival success was not predicated on the great emotional outbursts or physical manifestations common elsewhere during the Great Awakening. His moderate disposition and his audience’s Anglican background served to restrain such behavior. For his part Davies neither encouraged nor discouraged excess emotionalism, although he did consider it to be a valid expression of the salvific experience.

The fine oratorical ability and humble demeanor of Davies received favorable responses wherever he preached. He focused the content of his sermons on the harsh reality of frontier life, especially the imminence of death. Because of his own weak physical constitution he carried the conviction that his life had been spared from premature death so that he could preach to the people of Virginia. Consequently he considered his own PREACHING to be “as a dying man to dying men” (Pilcher 1971 :65). He balanced such dire preaching, however, with sermons on the enjoyment and pleasure to be derived from the justified life. His sermons, which were collected and published as Sermons on Important Subjects, were still being read on both sides of the Atlantic a century after his death.

Preaching did not exhaust the means that Davies used to reach Hanover with the gospel. He also wrote poetry to explicate further the divine truths gathered from his sermon preparations and to express his own devotional feelings toward God. They appeared in the local Virginia Gazette and were collected for the private libraries of a number of Anglican planters. In 1752 over fifty of his poems were published under the title Miscellaneous Poems. He was, as well, the first colonial American to write and publish hymns, many of which he wrote to accompany his sermons and to prepare his parishioners for the Lord’s Supper. His “Communion Hymns” were still being used into the twentieth century.

Davies, himself a slave owner, made the evangelistic outreach to the slave population a significant priority of his ministry. By 1755 nearly three hundred slaves attended his church services. With the help of friends in England, John and Charles Wesley numbered among them, Davies provided spelling books, catechetical material, and the hymnals of Isaac Watts for the slaves. The slaves especially valued Watts’s hymnals. Davies recounted that at times the “sundry of them were lodged all night in my kitchen; and sometimes, when I have awaked about two or three a-clock in the morning, a torrent of sacred harmony poured into my chamber and carried my mind away to heaven” (Pilcher 1971:112).

Advocate and Educator
Davies’s revivalistic success brought him into frequent conflict with the colonial government. Davies pressed the officials in Wi1liamsburg to recognize the Act of Toleration passed in England in 1689 as having force in the British colonies. Not until his trip to England (1753-1755) did he successfully secure a declaration from the royal government that the Act of Toleration extended to the dissenters in Virginia. With the commencement of the French and Indian War, the government of Virginia found it expedient to ignore remaining restrictions on the Presbyterians to ensure their loyalty to the Crown. Davies’s fight for the toleration of dissenters is recognized as laying the groundwork for the separation of Church and State in the United States.

In 1758 Samuel Davies became the fourth president of the College of New Jersey. He had earlier visited England with Gilbert Tennent to raise money for the fledgling college. The funds procured on the trip built Nassau Hall and helped to put the college on sound economic footing. During his brief two years as president he raised the standard for both entrance and graduation and planned to expand the library. His untimely death came on February 4, 1761, at the age of thirty-seven.

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References and Further Reading

Primary Sources:
Davies. Samuel.  Letters from the Rev. Samuel Davies, &c., Shewing the State of Religion Particularly Among the Negroes. London: R. Pardon, 1757.
—. The Duty of Masters to Their Servants in a Sermon. Lynchburg, VA: William W. Gray, 1809.
—. The Godly Family. Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications. 1993.
Davies. Samuel and George William Pilcher. The Reverend Samuel Davies Abroad. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967.
Davies, Samuel and Thomas Gibbons. Sermons, Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1864.

Secondary Sources:
Alley. Robert S. “The Reverend Mr. Samuel Davies: A Study In Religion and Politics, 1747-1759.” Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton U ni versity, 1962.
Bost, George H. “Samuel Davies: Colonial Revivalist and Champion of Religious Toleration.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1959.
Larson, Barbara Ann. “A Rhetorical Study of the Preaching of the Reverend Samuel Davies in the Colony of Virginia from 1747 to 1759.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1969.
Pilcher, George W.  Samuel Davies: Apostle Dissent in Colonial Virginia. Knoxville: University Tennessee Press, 1971.